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Paper short abstract:

In the Western discourse, Pakistani Muslim women have been depicted as passive and unaware of their life choices. Developing on a visual data and a yearlong ethnographic fieldwork, this talk particularly challenges this presumption.

Paper long abstract:

Following September 11, 2001 terrorists' attacks in New York, the debate over gender in Muslim societies has taken a new form in which "women" are explained and judged through pre-defined assumptions. As the Western world suddenly discovered the "miserable" and "depressed" condition of Muslim women and took a passionate stand to safeguard their rights, women's socio-religious practices (such as purdah) were interpreted as a sign of their oppression. Drawing on yearlong ethnographic fieldwork with women workers of Jamaat-e-Islami and NGOs in Islamabad Pakistan, and developing on the visual role of the internet in this regard, this talk examines Muslim women's diverse worldviews, and explicates how and in what ways they possess distinct personalities that are hard to justify with single identity of "oppressed" and "suffered". By highlighting the activism of Jamaat-e-Islami and NGOs women workers on the cases of Malala Yousafzai and Aafia Siddqui, the talk shows different ways of utilizing the power of agency, shaped under specific organizational habitus. It argues that there is a need to study Muslim women under the structures in which they are incorporated to explore how they attain a sense of purpose and wellbeing. The talk will be supplemented with the visual data taken from the social media, newspapers, and the internet, and will highlight the crucial need of integrating ethnography with the visual methodology to explore a deep understanding of gender dynamics in developing societies.